The listing or discussion of a prior-published document in this specification should not necessarily be taken as an acknowledgement that the document is part of the state of the art or is common general knowledge.
The apparel industry has recently entered the age of “Fast Fashion”, where turn-around times are key to market success. Being able to respond quickly to fickle consumer trends will provide a decisive competitive advantage in the apparel sector to both manufacturers and retailers. The use of ink-jet printing technology to accelerate garment sample development and facilitate faster and more cost-effective small-scale production runs shows great promise. This type of printing is known as direct to garment (or DTG) printing. In addition, the use of DTG printing to print onto premade garments may result in significant time- and cost-savings over current production and logistical methods. This is because DTG printing can be applied on a garment at, or very close to, the point of sale.
However, current DTG printers are limited to providing and image, pattern or block of colour onto a single surface of a garment, such as a T-shirt. As such, current DTG printers are used to embellish part of one surface of a garment and cannot currently be effectively used to provide a pattern or colour across an entire garment's outer surface. This is because any attempt to use a current commercially available printer will result in a noticeable seam and, potentially, a misalignment of the pattern to be printed across the entire surface of the garment. This is aesthetically unpleasing and results in reduced consumer satisfaction with the resulting garment.
There remains a need to provide improved DTG printers that can deliver seamless and, potentially, fully-aligned patterns across the surface of a garment. Such printers would enable manufacturers and retailers to respond very quickly to changing fashion trends and demand on a more local level, potentially resulting in greater profit and less wastage of materials.